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The architecture of disappearance: A liquid manifesto in Ahmedabad by Suryam Developers

At By The Waters, a revolutionary collaboration between SCDA and Suryam Developers, replaces the noise of traditional prestige with a 72,000-square-yard horizon of silence

07 Apr 2026

Team ELLE DECOR India

There is a specific, fleeting moment at dusk in Ahmedabad when the sky sheds its golden heat for a deep, translucent indigo. On the edge of the city, where the urban clamour usually intensifies, a different reality has been authored. Here, the light doesn’t hit a wall; it dissolves into a 72,000-square-yard mirror of water. As you stand in a living room that seems to float entirely without the support of visible masonry, the ripples of the lake become the primary interior finish. This is not a development in the traditional sense. It is a sovereign ecosystem where the architecture has performed a graceful act of renunciation.

The Philosophy of the Essential

For G.M. Patel and Ishan Patel of Suryam Developers, the journey toward By The Waters began as a visceral reaction to the noise of modern development. “We found that ‘more’ had become a misleading substitute for ‘better,'” Ishan reflects. “Materialism is not luxury”. GM’s vision was to pivot toward the essential—to create a sanctuary where the heartbeat of the home isn’t the masonry, but the water itself. This is Water Urbanism at its most radical. Rather than building on the land, the team has curated an environment where the boundary between the inhabitant and the elements simply evaporates. The project is a limited-edition collection of 99 bespoke villas, but to talk of bedroom counts or square footage feels pedestrian. These are pavilions of light and wind, designed as private observatories for a life lived in rhythm with the Shunya forest and the sprawling liquid horizon.

A Cabinet of Design

To achieve such atmospheric restraint, the Patels assembled what they call a Cabinet of Design. It is a symphony of specialists that includes the high-modernist rigour of SCDA Singapore, the holistic landscape choreography of Design Module (dM), and the invisible hydraulic brilliance of Witteveen+Bos. “The brief was an invitation to move beyond the vocabulary of a housing estate and toward an urban choreography of water,” says Jin Oon, Director at SCDA. For Jin, the water was never an edge, but a primary datum, a starting point for an architecture of disappearance. “We used monumental voids and rhythmic geometries to ensure the villas function as quiet observers of the horizon. The luxury here is the attainment of silence.” Design Module (dM) held a dual sovereignty, serving as both Principal Architects & Master Landscape Visionaries. Their task was to engineer a spatial surrender, ensuring the earth and the home met without friction. By designing both the shelter and the soil, dM transformed the landscape into a seamless, structural living room.

The Interior Breath

If the architecture provided by SCDA is the frame, interior vision is the breath helmed by Shaili Kastia, director at By Salt. Entering the sample villa, one is struck by a sensory minimalism; the cool temperature of honed stone underfoot and the tactile soul of sand-toned textiles.

“To me, luxury is the absence of the unnecessary,” Shaili explains. “I was drawn to silent neutrals like bone-hued stones and matte timbers that feel found rather than manufactured.” The palette is intentionally recessive, acting as a quiet canvas for the vibrant sapphire of the lake outside. The most evocative moment in the villa is the liminal space between the primary living volume and the waterfront deck. Here, the interior flooring seems to slip under the glass and emerge as the pool deck, a study in precision where the inward world meets the limitless world. Shaili’s work was also one of cultural translation, infusing SCDA’s global purity with the soul of Indian hospitality. Within the clean, Singaporean lines, she carved out spaces for multi-generational gathering, ensuring the home remains a place of deep connection.

Beyond the Amenity

In a market saturated with gilded lobbies and performative features, By The Waters offers a different currency: the luxury of the Absolute. Amenities here are not facilities; they are profound daily rituals. The estate is woven together by a 1.5km lakeside promenade and a private kayak trail that turns the water into a personal transit of tranquillity. Residents can retreat to ethereal over-water pavilions or survey the secluded horizon from an observation tower that feels untethered from the city. Even the boutique restaurant is a glass-walled sanctuary suspended over the ripples, ensuring that every meal is an elemental experience. “The modern connoisseur is no longer looking for gold-plated faucets,” Ishan notes. “They seek a high-performance sanctuary where the air feels filtered by the landscape.”

A Sovereign Landscape

The technical complexity required to maintain this 72,000-square-yard waterbody, the blue heart engineered by Witteveen+Bos to be a self-cleansing, living ecosystem, remains entirely silent to the residents. What remains is a rarefied atmosphere where time slows down. By The Waters is a rare achievement in the design world: a project that has the confidence to recede. It is architecture that doesn’t compete with nature but evolves into it, offering the discerning few a home that is not just a place to reside, but a private, liquid universe.

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